 
Thanks once again to everyone who sent up a letter (or e-mail) of comment. We're
gratified by the response; receiving your letters of comment really does
motivate us to keep publishing. Please be assured, too, that all of your
comments on the articles in Mimosa (whether or not they see print in the
Letters Column) will find their way back to our contributors, which provides
additional motivation to them as well. Perhaps surprisingly, the article
that generated the most response this time was Allyson and David Dyar's "Eatin'
With the Force" essay about different local delicacies they encountered in various
ports of call with the military. We'll get to those comments shortly, but first
we'll open with a letter by someone we haven't heard from in a while. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Mike Glicksohn, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Your special theme issue should
probably have been called the 'food and dining' issue, since I spotted little
mention of my favourite topic: drinking. In all honesty, 'food' is not a topic I'm
too qualified to write about or comment on. I eat, of course, better than ever
since marrying Susan, but despite the fact that I love to go to restaurants and
enjoy many different types of food, I still somehow consider eating a necessary
evil rather than a source of inspiration for fanzine articles.I might have done a tad better on
'drink' if I'd been a lot more active just after M14 appeared, but on the
other hand, most of the interesting tales (the Spayed Gerbil saga, the bug-infested
scotches I inadvertently consumed, etc.) have already been written up for fanzines.
(And one of the problems about the amusing, interesting, poignant, or unusual
stories one generates while drinking is that most of them are totally forgotten
afterwards.)Anyway, I know of few foods that
cause such intense devotion among fannish eaters as ribs. For my money, the best
ribs in North America are served in Ribs King in Cincinnati, but I know of many
other rib places throughout the U.S. that have their own passionately devoted,
albeit obviously misguided, supporters. Somewhere, sometime, some convention with
overlapping coffers is going to have to arrange for ribs to be flown in from half a
dozen of these famed locations to see if some sort of agreement can be reached.
(Oh, silly me: did I say 'agreement' in talking about fans and food? Obviously
I've been gafiated far too long!)- - - - - - - - - -
Tom Feller,Jackson, Mississippi I read with interest Nicki's opening
comments {{"A Portrait of the Fan Editor as a Child,
Part 1" }}. Like Nicki, I grew up on a farm, although my parents were
more modern than her grandparents. Rather than grow most of their own food, they
got in their car and drove to a supermarket. Nicki does describe meals that were
very much like those of my grandparents. I spent a day with them around Christmas
last year, and they still eat that way. Unfortunately, they still expect me to eat
as much as I did when I was a growing boy. (I'm still growing, just horizontally.)
They also retain the custom of calling the noon meal dinner and the evening one
supper. Lunch is for urban dwellers.- - - - - - - - - -
Catherine Mintz, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania While I enjoyed issue number fifteen
of Mimosa, you could have subtitled a substantial portion of it 'Tales of
Horror from the Table'.You would not know it from Dafydd
Dyar's encounter in the Upper Peninsula, but pasties have a long and honorable
history as the pre-Lord Sandwich answer to a portable lunch. The original was a
hash of vegetables with meat wrapped in a pastry crust, baked in covered pan in the
ashes of a dying fire, then swathed in a handkerchief and tucked into a pocket for
breakfast or lunch. While modern versions tend to be heavy on the potatoes and
turnips, the original had no potatoes, since they postdate the pasty in Europe; and
it may not have had turnips either, since they were fed to the stock. Pasties are
best eaten fairly soon after they are baked -- you don't want the crust and the
filling to become too well acquainted. The version I'm familiar with comes from
Wales, where they were the traditional food of miners going down into the pits.
Given that both hash and pastry are pretty much as good as the cook making them,
some pasties are excellent and others disgusting.I'd bet Dafydd was eating mutton
more often than he thought in Turkey. Even in fancy restaurants, what appear to be
enormous roast haunches of lamb are usually slices of young mutton interspersed
with slices of fat, the whole elaborately seasoned and formed into a cylinder on a
meter-long spit which is rotated upright in front of a wall of burning charcoal.
The heat can be so intense that it crisps the end of the cook's hair and leaves his
mustache frosty with ash. The outer layer of the roast is carved off in thin
slices, and every slice has a crust of cooked juices and a inner layer of rarer
meat. Then the whole thing is left to cook some more, so more servings can be
carved.Do continue to report on both Chat
and the Dire Wolf. Although they have distinct ecological niches and feed on
different prey populations, it might be interesting to have them discuss some of
the more ambiguous cases. This guy DiChario wrote a fine fannish piece, where would
they place him? As a pro or a fan? Perhaps on a platter if they were feeling very
formal. A blood-thirsty pair, indeed. I'm surprised the Dyars couldn't
find more to say about cuisine on Guam. Spam, the meat of choice for many on Guam,
is on the menu of every coffee shop on the island. In fact, the Atkins-Kroll
Toyota dealership would advertise that they would fill up the back of any newly
purchased pickup truck with cases of Spam. Some incentive, huh? It must have
worked, as they were the top-selling dealership on Guam.Also, I wouldn't want to slight the
island's ubiquitous sauce -- Tabasco. There is a bottle on every table and no
ketchup in sight. In 1989, Guam had the highest per capita rate of Tabasco
consumption in the U.S. The Dyars were right on the mark with their description of
'boonie peppers', quite possibly the hottest pepper on earth. But they didn't
mention my favorite Chamorro dish -- chicken or fish kelaguen, a mixture of
raw coconut, lime juice, those hot li'l boonie peppers, onion, and chicken or fish
(raw fish or cooked-enough-to-be-nearly-raw chicken) all ground up together.- - - - - - - - - -
Ben Zuhl, Falls Church, Virginia "Eatin' with the Force" was familiar.
We go through many of the same problems and experiments in the Foreign Service.
Serving in Krakow, Poland, during Martial Law was fascinating but foodwise left
much to be desired. Going to a restaurant, we would look at an extensive menu but
always have to ask the code question of the waiter, "What is good today?" His
answer would tell us what was actually available, regardless of its taste.
Cooking at home was an adventure since 'night soil' was used to fertilize crops.
This forced us to have to clean the veggies in Clorox before using them. The water
in the Vistula River was so polluted that industries couldn't use it. This was our
drinking water! To use it we had to boil it and then filter it in a large water
purifier we called the Blue Nun due to its size and shade.When we served in Manila, the Embassy
name for the Filipino delicacy Balut was 'Eggs with Legs'. The one time I had it
the Balut had no odor, and the taste was drowned in the salt that was customarily
poured over it. It was reputed among Filipinos to increase sexual staying power.
The only thing I thought it would increase was the blood pressure. Also in Manila
there were Lechon stands all over the place. In these three-sided huts, there was
a roaring fire with between one and three whole pigs being slowly turned over it.
Then the skin and fat were sliced off and sold by the piece, or whole lechon were
sold and served at special functions. There were many places to buy cats
and dogs already butchered. For this reason Americans with pets were advised to
get tags showing they had their rabies shots. This was supposed to make them less
likely to be stolen and eaten since the shots were supposed to make the animals
poisonous. We had friends whose relatives owned a prawn farm. At harvest time we
would go there and live for a weekend in a hut on stilts over the water. Each meal
was shrimp prepared in a variety of ways. It was worth the three-hour drive and
the 45 minutes in a tiny barka (canoe with one outrigger) to get there. David Dyar mentions 'pasties' in
Upper Peninsula, Michigan. My father's home town was on the southern edge of the
U.P., safely out of pasty country. For a number of years in my childhood, however,
every summer we drove from suburban Chicago up to my father's home town to visit
relatives, then across the U.P. and down into the 'mitten' part of Michigan, to
visit more relatives. I remember seeing all the signs for pasties, but we never
stopped, and as far as I can remember, I've never tasted a pasty. Maybe my father
already knew better.And so on to the Worldcon... I had
a good time in Winnipeg, and in fact everybody I've talked to, or whose con report
I've so far read, had a good time there. But I'm a little puzzled and disturbed
that turnout had dropped so much from other recent North American worldcons, and in
particular that so many writers and editors were conspicuous by their absence. If
nothing else, it seems rather insulting to Canada and Canadian fandom and prodom on
the occasion of the first worldcon there in twenty-one years. True, Winnipeg was a
little off the beaten path for most North American fans and pros, but so was
Orlando in 1992. True, low airline competition meant that Winnipeg was more
expensive to get to by plane than Orlando had been, but the already-low hotel rates
plus the current strength of the U.S. dollar meant that, from the Baltiwash area
and presumably the whole mid-Atlantic, and probably from many other points in North
America, a fan would have more than saved on hotel expenses what the fan spent on
extra airfare. I wonder how much Bicoastal snobbery had to do with it. On the
other hand, reportedly the publishing industry is retrenching. Maybe the editors
had less travel money and less interest in making deals, and maybe those pros who
con-go only for business stayed away because they knew of the relatively poor
chances of finding editors there. Oh, well. A good time was had by all who did
attend, and maybe it was just as well to shake off some of the fakefans and purely
mercenary pros and editors.Oh, yes, on another topic. If
memory serves, in the letters column Harry Warner somewhere says that the word
'fandom' is a fannish coinage. In the recent Baseball documentary on PBS,
however, it occurs, with reference to baseball fans, in a quote from a sports
reporter writing in 1910 or so.- - - - - - - - - -
Art Rapp, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania I am green with envy (or perhaps an
unfortunate episode of experimental cuisine) after reading Allyson M.W. Dyar's
account of strange sustenance offered in various foreign climes where she and her
husband were stationed. I, too, ate my way through 20 years of Army chow in
various exotic locations (Germany, Italy, Korea, Texas, Japan, Iceland, and
probably a few others I've mercifully forgotten). Of course, there was the
Guardhouse mess hall at Fort Sam Houston (I was on the staff, not an involuntary
inmate) where all of our cooks were natives of Louisiana bayou country, and any
unsuspecting diner who put a few drops of their homebrewed hot sauce on his food
would clutch his throat in horror, drop his tableware, and dash madly for the water
fountain. (The cooks themselves poured the sauce on their vittles like ketchup.)
Aside from the two assigned cooks, the kitchen staff was recruited from the
prisoner population, but since that was shortly after WWII when a lot of old
Regular Army noncoms were still around, trying hard but unsuccessfully to keep
sober long enough to earn their retirement, we turned up a lot of extra help with
culinary know-how. (And, behind bars, they unwillingly remained sober, which isn't
denying that shakedowns of the cellblocks frequently turned up jars of various
unidentified liquids which would have equalled anything fandom produced in the name
of Blog, if allowed to ferment a few more days.)Dave Thayer's article on Army chow
{{"Army Chow and Other War Atrocities" }}
(and it has the ring of truth) indicates that he had a lot tougher time with the
Food Service branch of the military than I did. In Korea we dined outdoors during
the winter of `51-`52, sitting on GI cans or squatting in the snow trying to empty
our mess kits before the food froze to them. After three months or so, someone got
around to erecting a dining hall for us: a squad tent with waist-high narrow plank
tables so we could set our mess kits down and use both hands, bellying up to the
tables like cowboys in a movie Western bar. But the food was hot and also the wash
line (which isn't always true in field cookery, GI style), and since it was far
enough back from the front lines that no one was shooting at us, it was no worse
than basic training (where an old Platoon Sergeant gathered a crowd of us loudly
complaining trainees one day at the rifle range when lunch was late, and advised us,
"Now in civilian life you guys may have lived to eat, but I'm telling you, in the
Army you eat to live." Good advice, which I remembered all through my military life
and long afterward.)Have I mentioned military ice cream?
The stuff comes in little slabs, about 4-by-5 inches and a half-inch thick, wrapped
in a band of thin paper, and usually in any flavor you can imagine, if all you can
imagine is vanilla. Since, outside the US, it is usually made with powdered milk,
its flavor is guaranteed not to enchant you, but it's tolerable on hot summer days.
The most memorable thing about GI ice cream bars is that if you get it at all, you
get it in generous quantities, so that anyone who cares for more than the initial
serving will find dozens of further helpings available after everyone has finished
dining. These, regrettably, are always plain vanilla.- - - - - - - - - -
Harry Andruschak, Torrance, California The article in M15 dearest to
my heart was from David Thayer. Not that I ate C-Rations in the Army. I was in
the U.S. Navy between 1963 and 1973, and it was the opinion of the Navy that we had
the best food of all the services. "The Navy gets the gravy while the Army gets
the beans."And it probably was. Of course, like
all institutional food...armed forces, hospitals, airplanes, anything that has to
be mass-produced, there was a certain blandness. The Navy went along with SAD,
Standard American Diet, and it was adequate.Another legacy of my years in the
Navy is that I am a fast eater. Not in the sense of gulping or bolting my food.
More like what Isaac Asimov wrote about in his autobiography. If you remember, he
mentioned how his own early training made him a faster eater than average, and on
the rubber chicken circuit he was always the first to finish.In some respects, that is me. Even
after all these years I find it hard to break the habit of sitting down and eating,
non-stop, no distractions and no conversation, as if I still had only 15 minutes to
eat before I had to relieve the watch. Woe unto any sailor late in relieving the
watch!- - - - - - - - - -
Ken Bulmer, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England Concerning Thayer's piece about Army
food, I can only say that I served for a time with the U.S. 15th Air Force in Italy.
Here I think it was that I first came across peanut butter which these days I eat
regularly. At the time I was amazed at blokes putting peanut butter and jam
(jelly?) on the same piece of bread. Strange. The U.S. food we found rather too
sloppy without anything to get your teeth into, although that may simply have been
an idiosyncracy of the base. We were most of us, I remember, glad to get back to
bully beef and biscuits and real food. During the war a myth grew up that we
soldiers ate everything with our spoons. When my mother asked if this was true I
said only when I was with the Yanks. A special issue of Mimosa on food
was a brilliant idea: you've gotten some of the most compulsively readable articles
you've ever published. David Thayer's on army food in Vietnam and Sharon Farber's
on hospital food are perhaps the most outstanding, in their black-humorous
combinations of death and/or violence with bad food. David's was particularly
interesting at this moment, as it covered an important subject virtually untouched
in any of the famous Vietnam War movies I watched in a recent video orgy. I think
it was in Platoon that a soldier crossing a waist-deep river dipped his
canteen into the water and was about to take a drink until a buddy suggested that
malaria was not something one should want to pick up. And aside from a few
torchings of the natives' farms, that's just about the only reference to food that
I saw in three films. It's probably a good thing that the films were equally
circumspect about how soldiers do in the woods what bears proverbially also do
there, but perhaps David will have the courage and humor to take up this equally
urgent subject sometime.David and Allyson Dyar's piece on
truly international dining was also quite interesting. I've only visited half a
dozen countries, none of them particularly exotic, but I've picked up a few useful
pieces of wisdom the hard way: Do not order hamburgers anywhere outside the U.S.,
even in Canada. In England, Mexican food is gourmet exotica (something unbelievable
to Californians) and therefore expensive: go for the Indian instead. In Scotland,
eat a haggis. Go on, I dare you. In Holland, eat pancakes three times a day:
they're exotic and wonderful. In Germany, the sauerkraut is actually edible,
something I've never experienced at home.Nicholas DiChario's first fanzine
article {{"Breathing Water" }} was of particular
interest to me, seeing as I was the person who got to call him up in the first place
to tell him he was nominated for the Hugo and the Campbell. So I feel in a way
responsible for his visit to San Francisco, and his Rochester-eye view of my home
town was an interesting one.My only food expedition to North
Beach during ConFrancisco went to The Stinking Rose, an Italian restaurant
expressly designed for garlic-lovers. Of course there are problems with eating
there. About noon the next day I ran into ConAdian chairman John Mansfield. "You
at at The Stinking Rose last night, didn't you?" he observed.{{ We also visited The Stinking Rose during our
ConFrancisco trip (on the night after we had won our second Hugo Award), and were
bemused when a table of local Washington fans (who had arrived there before us)
greeted us with applause as we walked through the restaurant to our table. The
hostess looked at us curiously as if we might be celebrities she should
recognize. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Mike McInerny, Daly City, California "Breathing Water" by Nick DiChario
was well-written, entertaining and conveyed neofannish enthusiasm, but contained a
few errors. The sign says 'South San Francisco, The Industrial City'.
Actually, South City (as they call themselves who live there) is mostly famous for
that sign and nothing else. Also, if the cab driver cruised from the airport past
Fisherman's Wharf through Chinatown to get to a hotel near ConFrancisco, then Nick
was really being taken for a ride, far and wide of where he wanted to go!Roger Sims's article {{"The Politics of a Dinner" }} was also
interesting. Like Roger, when I lived in New York City I found that club fandom
was really scattered -- there was ESFA in Newark, New Jersey, the Lunarians in the
Bronx, and the Fanoclasts in Brooklyn. I think I may have been the only fan to
regularly go to all of them. I started FISTFA in Manhattan (1963-1969) to try to
form a bridge for all fans to meet. After every ESFA meeting we went out to eat at
a local cafeteria; after Fanoclasts, we stopped at a White Castle, where burgers
were always 4 for a dollar, and had fried onions on them. At Lunarians there was
usually coffee and cake or cookies, and a wild card game of Hearts with Charlie
Brown, Frank Dietz, Walt Cole, Ted White, and myself. At FISTFA, it was mostly BYOB,
and we usually waited until very late at night for those who didn't approve to leave
before we smoked any pot. Fans who didn't get stoned (like Ted White) would go,
then we who stayed would listen to music until dawn.- - - - - - - - - -
Richard Brandt, El Paso, Texas This issue was an especially
pleasant treat as I began reading it while sitting in a hotel restaurant in Midland,
Texas, waiting both for my meal to be served and for the rest of my entourage to
arrive the next day for a customer meeting, and as Nicki implies, no fan should
have to eat alone...Anyway, Bruno Ogorelec's tales
{{"The Schoonerburger and Other Stories" }} evoked
memories of my 'starving student' days. When I was an undergraduate living on
campus, along with our tuition we were compelled to buy meal tickets redeemable in
the cafeteria, which fell short of providing three square's worth a day for an
entire semester. To stretch out this allowance as far as possible, I resorted to
no-cost supplements wherever possible. With Thousand Island dressing, which Sharon
Farber so reviles, I found I could easily double the bulk of the lowest-price item
on the menu, a single-scoop serving of tuna salad. Similarly, the canisters of
grated parmesan cheese placed at no charge on each table could pump up a serving of
spaghetti and meat sauce.Eventually I found both quarters and
employment off campus, and was able to provide myself with more substantial
home-cooked fare (my piece de resistance: macaroni and fish). When one of
my two roommates moved out of the two-story house we were renting, I had to fall
back on such stratagems as seeing how far a man could go on a sack of potatoes, a
tub of sour cream, a block of margarine, and a shaker of garlic salt for flavor.Ian Gunn's article {{"Air Fare, Train Fare" }} also reminds me of the
meal that Michelle and I shared with Ed, a fan we met at Westercon. I had promised
Michelle we wouldn't have to buy every meal with a credit card at the Texaco
station across the street, but even though there were also a Carl's Jr. and a
perfectly good Denny's on the same street, who wanted other alternatives? Ed was
also hanging around late in the day Monday, and someone suggested we try the
Marriott next door, which had three restaurants. Ed thought Marriotts were
pretty reliable, so off we went.We chose the more moderately-priced
of the places, and sat down to order a lavish repast: steak for Ed, prime rib for
Michelle, chicken for myself. Ed made a joke about a place in L.A. that offered
your meal free if any employee of the restaurant asked you, "Is everything all
right?" This joke lost some of its humor as the evening wore on and we scanned the
horizon in vain for our waiter, whose existence could only be inferred from
observing a trail of surliness that was left in his wake.As for the food, Ed took one bite of
his steak, grimaced painfully, then fighting obvious reluctance, reached for a
bottle of ketchup and did the nigh-unthinkable. Our other selections were of the
same caliber. Ed was also supposed to get onion rings instead of french fries, but
the waiter took such precipitous flight after dropping off our dishes that Ed
didn't have time to mention it. After the passage of sufficient time for a volume
of Proust, said functionary actually appeared at our table to ask how our food was,
but literally took off running before we could answer. Ed insisted we should leave
a two-cent tip, but even we, marginal as we were, could not muster sufficient
heartlessness. We left two nickels instead.Finally, Nick DiChario's article was
wonderfully written. If he keeps at it, the kid could become a halfway decent fan
writer someday...- - - - - - - - - -
Harry Warner, Jr., Hagerstown, Maryland The thing that most impressed me
about this collection of food pieces plus a fakefood item or two is how far
superior the Walt Willis reprint {{"Foot and
Drink" }} is to everything else as far as sheer writing ability is
concerned. Nobody in fandom today can achieve such writing over the course of
several pages, although a few contemporary fans may get out a paragraph here and
there that is superior, and thus sticks out conspicuously among the more routine
remainder of the piece. I don't mean that other contributors in this issue aren't
interesting, and amusing, and informative. But none of them lets off the verbal
fireworks in a continuous barrage like these pages from "The Harp Stateside." Steve Jeffery, Kidlington, Oxon, United Kingdom I was reading Walt Willis's article,
and almost immediately I bumped into another of his terrible puns, the 'Sundae
Observance Society'. For that, Walt, you fully deserve the demon Burger With
Everything On It. God, aren't American portions impressive (and sometimes
oppressive) in their sheer quantity? There were several times while I was in Texas
that we felt like going back to a restaurant and skipping the entree, so we'd have
a fighting chance at the sweet trolley. Or at least asking for child's portions,
with the humble apologetic explanation that we were British, and thus unused to
steaks that weighed in at several pounds rather than ounces.Of that visit, to the Mexican border
of Texas, I have strong memories of the food: the absolute delight of a first
encounter with Dunkin' Donuts, fajitas, the never ending cup of coffee (a most
worthy American tradition) and, with more mixed reaction, a seemingly ubiquitous
and endless supply of guacamole, pico and the meat soup at a Mexican trucker's
cafe.{{ Well, being in Texas explains it; everything is bigger
in Texas! You apparently never ran into that Americanism, Nouvelle Cuisine, which
stresses presentation (artsy) over portion size (puny). You might be familiar with
parodies of Nouvelle Cuisine, where the waiter serves the diner a main course
consisting of a pea, a small carrot, and an inch-square piece of steak. In truth,
it's a bit more food than that, but the portions are not very large. While
it seemed popular in some areas of California, it (thankfully) has never caught on
in the rest of the country. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Joseph T. Major, Louisville, Kentucky If Walt Willis ever reprises his
fabled 1952 visit (perhaps we can accelerate the semi-centennial), he can visit one
of the many top-it-yourself hamburger palaces that have come to be in the past few
years. Here in Louisville we have two such: Flakey Jake's, a large chain, and W.W.
Cousin's, a local chain. Then the only person he can disappoint by not finishing
the Ultimate Hamburger With Absolutely Everything is himself.Looking at the unshaven Mayhew
drawing (Joe Mayhew himself is pretty unshaven at that, but a truce to compliments)
illustrating David Thayer's daymares of Army food, I was reminded of one use for
K-Ration peanut butter: it makes an acceptable shaving cream surrogate. However,
confessing to a war crime, namely giving C-Rations to innocent Vietnamese who might
have mistaken them for food, is hardly likely to win him respect no matter how much
he regrets it. (I know what they called ham and lima beans, and Oedipus should
have felt insulted by the comparison.)- - - - - - - - - -
Terry Jeeves, Newby, Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom An 'all food' issue is a change and
your opening comment caused me to think back to a few memorable incidents in India.
In Bombay, I tried a 'chicken pie' and was amazed to find when it arrived, the pie
crust was simply a mass of potato crisps. Up the coast at Juhu, I was once served
a bottle of lemonade with a thumb-sized insect floating inside. When I pointed it
out, the barman offered to fish it out for me! Walt's excellent Stateside piece
reminded me of a sign in Boston: 'Chinese Spaghetti House'.In David Thayer's piece, I thought
the idea of throwing food into the fire in front of starving Vietnamese, or taunting
them by throwing empty cans off a lorry was disgusting. Ogorelec showed us the
other side of the coin in relating (without moaning about it) the hardships
experienced by those living in places where rampant inflation reigns supreme, where
on payday one runs to spend the lolly before its value is halved overnight.
Engholm chose a no-no subject for me {{"The Rise
and Fall of Cucumber" }}, as cucumbers are not on my list of favorite fruit
-- so even an amateur press association named Cucumber scares me away!Excellent LoCs, and I must put in
another plug for the superb illustrations by Ranson, Mayhew, and one or two names
which I couldn't make out. Dave Rike's article {{"The Tower" }} is an interesting account of the
pseudofannish legend of building a tower of beer cans to the Moon. In it, Dave
speculates about the origins of the idea. In 1962, Pat Fetta pointed out that the
idea had been swiped from a San Francisco Bay Area disk jockey name Red Blanchard,
who on his show had been promoting a tower of beer cans.- - - - - - - - - -
Ahrvid Engholm, Stockholm, Sweden I had read Willis's story before (in
Warhoon 28) but I hadn't really got the grip of the real story of the
bheer can moon tower (Dave Rike's article). We've heard the myth in Sweden too and
would sometimes build small bheer can towers ourselves. It was when I came to the
Brighton Worldcon in 1979 that I got really impressed with the myth. At Seacon's
dead dog party, they made a triangular bheer can tower along one wall, with full
bheer cans paid for by the convention. The party room must have had 4-5 metres to
the ceiling, and the cans were free for the taking. When you had drunk one you
were supposed to start a new tower along the opposite wall with the empty cans. I
don't remember what happened with the new tower, because I did my very best to
contribute to it.The strangest thing happened after I
had finished the article about Cucumber. I had re-read all those old Crochet
Supplements in Cucumber and, well, got a bit inspired -- so I relaunched
Crochet. This time I did it as an electronic fanzine (with a very small
photocopied print run beside) and since October last year I have published them
almost weekly (26 issues, No. 20 to 45). And that's not all: I've also founded a
new, small APA, though it is not secret this time. It's called SKAPA, like an
earlier APA that was secret.There were some comments on my hoax
article in the LoCol. For the record it should be noted that the article was true.
(Those suggesting that I am a hoax could be of great help if they wrote to the
Intersection committee in Glasgow and promoted this notion. That way I wouldn't
have to pay the convention fee, which like all con fees seems to skyrocket. A
non-existent person should be let in for free, shouldn't he?)Anyway, Vincent Clarke noted in his
letter that we in Sweden "more or less modelled (our) fandom on what (we'd) read,"
just like British fandom modelled itself from what they read in American fanzines.
This is basically true, but it should be noted that there was a considerable
shortage of foreign fanzines in Sweden. The best ones, the classics from the `50s
and `60s, existed in maybe only 1-2 copies here. We could get occasional copies
(sometimes we could borrow from older fans), but we couldn't follow complete
threads of myths and events. There were major gaps in the fannish education --
and we had to invent things to fill those gaps. For instance, when the divinity of
Roscoe was introduced here, we had to improve the Roscoe theology, like all the
details of the Perfect Fandom that Roscoe would take all trufans to. Entirely new
concepts were added, like the Fannish Raw Power that comes from Roscoe.The most valuable sources were books,
like Harry Warner, Jr.'s All Our Yesterdays, Moskowitz's The Immortal
Storm, Knight's The Futurians, Hell's Cartographers (six
autobiographies, most by Futurians), and of course The Enchanted Duplicator
(which we first found serialized in Amazing -- Ted White did a good thing by
publishing that). People who want to interest others in fandom's history should
remember to try to make the most valuable information available in book form.
Books survive.These days I guess the easiest thing
is to make fanhistorical information available electronically. Things on the net,
like printed books, will probably survive. Dave Langford is making all his
Ansibles available that way. When I logged into the Ansible FTP-site
I also found Rob Hansen's ca. 1 megabyte-long history of British fandom. I've
myself made some texts available electronically and will continue doing it. (I'm
thinking of doing a draft translation into English of my Swedish fancyclopedia, the
Fandbook, as long as I don't have to do it manually. The translations
programs available now aren't too good, but maybe in a couple of year's time...)We also need some technical
development, so we could publish some old fanzines electronically. OCR is barely
usable for printed texts. Mimeographed text is probably an OCR nightmare -- maybe
texts could be published as picture files instead?- - - - - - - - - -
Pär Nilsson, Halmstad, Sweden In reply to Vin¢ Clarke's
letter of comment about the origins of Swedish fandom, I would like to say that
fandom in Sweden is modeled on `50s American fandom rather than `50s British
fandom. The Tower to the Moon Made From Empty Bheer Cans is a well-known part of
our fannish mythology, and the Carl Brandon hoax was duplicated by John-Henri
Holmberg (as 'Carl Brandon, Jr.'), just to name two examples. I'd heard of people
like Terry Carr, Boob Stewart, Ted White, and Dave Rike before I heard of Walt
Willis (or indeed, Vin¢ Clarke).Anyway, I thought the best things in
M15 were by Thayer, Farber, Hooper and Ogorelec (words), and by Harvia,
Stiles, Steffan and Erichsen (illos). Pass the praise on!{{ Consider it done! We have been fortunate to be able to
feature some wonderful art to complement the fine essays we've published. We've
been fortunate enough to win awards, but it's the contributors who really deserve
the honor. }}- - - - - - - - - -
Joseph Nicholas, South Tottenham, London, United Kingdom I was interested to read Ahrvid
Engholm's history of the secret Swedish APA 'Cucumber', albeit that I don't see why
its members felt it necessary to keep its existence quite such a deadly secret.
After all, apas are pretty exclusivist publications anyway, in that they are
distributed only to a select group of people. So why go to the length of developing
an apa which is intended only for distribution to the select of the select?This question aside, Engholm refers
to a game in which participants name stations in the Stockholm underground system
until... "the one who says 'Stora Mossen' first wins." He gives no date for the
invention of this game, although from his context it must have been developed in
1980 or 1981. If so, then it is not original to him, but would have been inspired
by a very similar game invented by Kevin Smith, based on the London Underground
system and called 'Finchley Central'. As explained in a late 1970s issue of his
fanzine Dot, he invented the game (with Allan Scott) while waiting for a train home
following a monthly One Tun meeting. Victory in the game was achieved by being the
first to say 'Finchley Central'; finesse or style was shown by managing to say
'Finchley Central' immediately before your opponents. (Lack of finesse, of
course, would be demonstrated by saying 'Finchley Central' at the very start of a
game -- Engholm's example of a 'bad game' is almost identical to Dot's.)
Kevin threatened (in jest) to produce an expensive three-volume set of rules with
awful illustrations, without which the game could not be played at all.- - - - - - - - - -
Martin Morse Wooster, Silver Spring, Maryland Alan Stewart's article
{{"When the Fans Hit the Eats" }} is a bit unfair
towards American fans when he thinks it is a national eating out habit' to take out
the calculators and determine individual bills and tips to the penny. I've been in
a lot of fannish dinner expeditions (I've even led a local sf dining group that has
met 101 times since 1985), and I've never seen this sort of behavior. Most
of the time, American fans are as laid back as Australian ones about dining, except
our surpluses are usually given to the waiter rather than to charity. (Not much
different, actually, given how low waiters' wages are these days.)One topic I wish Alan Stewart or
Ahrvid Engholm had addressed is what fans in other countries like to eat when they
dine. I recall that when I first read British fanzines in the 1970's, their pages
were full of stories about fans having a few pints, then dining on extremely hot
vindaloo curry, then running to the bathroom screaming, then going back to the con
and downing five or six more pints. Is this still a British habit? What do
Swedish fans like to eat when they go out? Around here, fans like to eat Chinese
and Italian food; they tend to balk at more adventurous cuisines, such as Ethiopian,
West African, or Central American.Dave Kyle's reference to Fandom's
Cookbook {{in "Tales of Bheer and
Raven's Cake" }} leads me to faunch after this long-lost item. If anyone
decides to reprint this cookbook, please let me know, because I collect cookbooks by
sf fans and pros. Like fanthologies and fanwriter collections, they tell me quite a
bit about fandoms of the past.{{ Martin provided a listing of fannish cookbooks in
his letter, ranging from the relatively obscure (Fanfare, published by two
Chicago fans in 1979) to the relatively well-known (The Bakery Men Don't See,
which was a Hugo Award nominee in 1992). We know of a fannish cookbook that was
published by a fan group in Nashville about six years ago (Nicki had a recipe in it).
There are undoubtedly others. }}In the letters column, Harry Warner
should explain why non-sf amateur publications are "...incorrectly called fanzines."
Why aren't they fanzines? They aren't published for a profit; their primary
purpose is for people to communicate with each other; and they may not have any
connection with science fiction, but then fannish fanzines aren't supposed to be
about sf. Moreover, some of the underground's writers, like Candi Strecker and
Anni Ackner, have been showing up in fanthologies -- and are better and funnier
writers than most traditional fanzine writers.- - - - - - - - - -
David Thayer, Hurst, Texas Andy Hooper's article {{"I Fried A Thousand Times" }} about hot and fast
food left me in a cold sweat. I partially paid my way through college working one
summer in a hot dog chain. Had the minimum wage labor not been mind-deadening
enough, at the end of August a teenager, his eyes dilated by drugs, appeared at the
take-out window with a silver-plated revolver. The district manager missed the
point when he offered me a raise the next day not to quit.In response to Richard Dengrove's
question in the letters column about reliving Vietnam, the behavior for a veteran
is not unlike that of a child facing the monsters in the dark. A child cannot
dispel the nightmares until he proves to himself that they are not real. Adults
are no different. Only that the nightmares were once real and harder to dispel.I take exception to Harry Warner,
Jr., stating that Mike Gunderloy incorrectly called alternative press publications
'fanzines'. Mike was merely one of the first. The term now applies to a myriad of
diverse publications. Language lives and dies by its ability to change, both in
words and definitions. Harry just can't grok it. I was interested in your comments on
Martin Morse Wooster's LoC. I agree (somewhat) with his comments about the
difficulty of storing electronic fanzines, although setting up electronic archives
is fairly common now. Also, since there are a number of archives available of
all of Usenet, then any postings (like the Ansible ones), will be
around forever.Also, the comments about "...no room
on the net for illos..." are no longer true. With tools like Mosaic around, you
can not only have the illos, you could even have more complicated stuff (for
example, audio/video of the stories being told) as part of the documents. It's not
common yet, but it is certainly available even with current technology.- - - - - - - - - -
John Foyster, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia I wish I could be as comforted as R
Laurraine Tutihasi is (in the letters column) about library and their collections
of fanzines. In Australia libraries tend to be quite keen to collect stuff like
this (and there are a couple of libraries in Australia which collect fanzines), but
they also tend not to bother too much about them, and allow them to fall into
disuse (or dispose of them) too lightly. Only this week one of the Australian
newspapers carried a pretty sad story about a university faculty disposing of its
specialist library at prices of $.50 to $3 a volume -- and by 'specialist' I mean
the kind of library with autographed first editions. In many cases (and this could
apply to science fiction and fanzine collections) vast amount of effort which have
gone into the collection are tossed away casually. I believe there is a much
stronger case for those who have collections to make sure that they stay in private
hands, with people who really care. Great, I thought. A special issue
of Mimosa when I've just discovered that I've gained five pounds. However,
after reading David Thayer's, Sharon Farber's, and Andy Hooper's articles, I've
decided you should try marketing the ish as a diet aid.With respect to Andy's article, I
don't know what it is about Pepsico's fast-food chains. I've avoided Pizza Hut
assiduously after reading an article in Harper's several years ago which
talked about the propensity for ground glass and machine parts to find their way
into the pizzas. Now Andy Hooper gives us reasons (as if the atrocious food wasn't
enough) to avoid Taco Bell. I think it may be time to quit patronizing Kentucky
Fried Chicken.I have this theory that all
conversations at conventions eventually come to the subject of Harlan Ellison.
Actually, I usually say "deteriorate into discussions of Harlan," but I can't use
that phrasing for Ted White's entertaining and fascinating anecdotes. Admittedly,
"The Girl" is only peripherally about Harlan, but his personality and other
people's reactions to it manage to dominate the story. Ted's ability to sketch
people and events is unparalleled.- - - - - - - - - -
Michael Shannon, Austin, Texas I enjoyed the fact that Ted White's
"The Girl" gave us a somewhat positive view of Harlan Ellison's relations with the
world; that seems to be a rare feat.Also, Andy Hooper's "I Fried A
Thousand Times" made an excellent closure. I had heard some of the stories from
Andy when he and I both lived in Madison, Wisconsin, and I was hoping they would
see print. It reminded me of my days as a dishwasher at a Country Kitchen
restaurant; I, too, was there long enough to see the start and finish of most of
the staff.- - - - - - - - - -
Ted White, Falls Church, Virginia So Harlan calls me up on the phone,
not long after the most recent issue of Mimosa has appeared with my story
"The Girl" in it."Ted, Ted, Ted..." he says with mock
sorrow. "When will you let me vet these things for you, so that you don't
make all these amazing mistakes?"He tells me that he is in fact
referring to "The Girl." I ask him what mistakes I made."Well, for openers, Dona S***** is
still very much alive," Harlan says. "And all those credits she gave you? She
wasn't making them up, Ted." It seems that it was her mother who recently
died of cancer. "She took over her parents' garment business," Harlan tells me,
"and she's doing very well with it." He remains in contact with her, and she and
his wife Susan are friends.That seems to have been the major
error on my part. Harlan also says that he didn't get his Austin Healy from Bill
Hamling -- I have no idea why I retain such a clear memory of him telling me
otherwise at the time, but perhaps Bill figured in a different car story and I
confused them.Harlan also confirms my supposition
that he and Dona had not been 'intimate', as we say, in those golden years of yore.
He considered her to be too young. He enjoyed her company in public.In any event, I am pleased that Dona
is still alive after all, and happy to convey this information to your readers.- - - - - - - - - -
Brian Earl Brown, Detroit, Michigan Overall, I found that I just
couldn't get into the 'food' theme of M15. We all like to eat, some more
than others, but alas, I have few food preferences (to my wife's despair whenever
she asks me, "What do you want for supper?"). Outside of nothing too spicy,
nothing too messy, and nothing that looks like something alive, I'll eat about
anything. How boring.Nonetheless, there were several very
enjoyable articles in this issue, including Sharon Farber's always delightful (and
disturbing) tour of doctoring {{"Tales of
Adventure and Medical Life" }}, David Thayer's C-Ration memoirs, Andy Hooper's
Fry-ghtmare from Taco Hell, and Ted White's "The Girl." Ian Gunn and Alan Stewart
both mentioned the American policy of tipping waiters, which they contrast to the
Australian policy of paying waiters a decent wage to begin with. I agree there's
something cruel about making a person's livelihood dependent on offhand generosity
of strangers, the way restaurants do when they make the bulk of a waiter's income
come out of tips.- - - - - - - - - -
Darrell Schweitzer, Strafford, Pennsylvania I'm glad to see that Dave Rowe (in
the letters column) has coined (or uses) the handy term 'hoax-hoax'. We've needed
something like that for a long time, for cases where someone starts out as a real
person (or at least convinced of their own reality) and ends up a hoax after all.
In the pages of Energumen, 20 years ago or so, there was some discussion of
whether or not a Canadian fan named Will Straw was or was not a hoax. I chimed in,
suggesting that he was not, because the hoax had no apparent agenda, quite unlike,
I added offhandedly, the David Hulvey hoax, which Robert Whitaker and I had
perpetrated to parody fannish fandom. Hulvey was a militantly fannish fan of the
early `70s, derived from such then topical sources as Firesign Theatre. He was so
stridently anti-sercon that, well, one was tempted to have a little fun with him.
My one off-hand reference took off. I got several inquiries about it. Years later,
I was astonished when someone who I thought had actually known Hulvey asked me,
"How much of him were you?"There I was re-inventing the wheel.
The hoax-hoax. Hulvey probably believed in his own reality. By the time we were
done with him, it wasn't so certain.- - - - - - - - - -
Lloyd Penney, Brampton, Ontario, Canada Concerning the theme of M15, food
and drink are popular topics in fandom, in spite of the fact that many of us are
the victims of food and drink. By that, I mean that food and drink are the
main reasons conventions don't sell t-shirts in sizes small and medium anymore.As for hoaxing, it is far and wide
in fandom. However, hoaxes are usually started by people who only see names in
fanzines, but never the faces connected with them. Dale Speirs told me at ConAdian
that people would see his name in print, but they'd never see him. Eventually,
word got around that Dale Speirs was a hoax, and that the name was simply one of
Garth Spencer's pseudonyms. It took several appearances at conventions in Alberta
and British Columbia for Dale to convince others that he really did
exist.- - - - - - - - - -
Maia Cowan, Royal Oak, Michigan I had hoped to contribute a family
heirloom to your Food issue, but for some reason none of my sisters preserved our
father's recipe for pickled tongue. Actually, I know the reason: all of us hated
the smell. The recipe's appearance on our kitchen table was our cue to go visit
our grandparents for several days. We could never understand how we could be
related to a man who would actually eat such a disgusting thing.I do remember that the list of
ingredients included a bottle of sherry. The sherry had nothing to do with pickling
the tongue, at least not directly. The instructions began, "Take a swig of the
sherry, because you have to pick up the damned tongue." This bit of advice is
repeated at suitable points in the process. The recipe concludes, "The tongue is
pickled, and so is the cook."I never learned where my father got
the recipe. He may well have written it himself. He was, after all, the one who
dubbed my aunt's delicious egg noodles, "Aunt Ann's Ancient Secret Family Recipe
For Homemade Egg Noodles, Also Good For Patching Plastic Swimming Pools."Life was entertaining around our
house, even when we weren't cooking.Mimosa 15 was also
entertaining, even when your contributors were writing about food even less
appetizing than a pickled cow's tongue. It's hard to think of many 'fan'
subjects that have been ignored by 'historians' like food. Conventions,
discussions, and friendships in fandom usually all revolve around a meal, snacks,
or something having to do with food. Great idea.I had to laugh at Rich's experience
with the whipped cream can {{"A Portrait of the Fan Editor
as a Child, Part 2" }}. A few days ago, I saw a Reddi-Whip commercial
hitting on the 'nostalgia' of good whipped cream from a can. I remembered the
good-tasting whipped cream from my younger days, so when the boys came here for a
day, I bought a can of Reddi-Whip and lectured them on the joys of the 'finer things'
in life. Needless to say, the can didn't work and we had to take it back. Grrrr.
Dad as goofball, exposes himself again.{{ Thanks for the compliment, but the idea for the 'food
and drink' theme issue was mostly Teddy Harvia's. Anyway, you're right that food is
one of the fundamental forces in the fan universe. The response to our call for
submissions was even greater than we had hoped for, and even provided a few
unexpected morsels like the following mini-article... }}- - - - - - - - - -
Malgorzata Wilk, Warsaw, Poland I first joined the fandom in
September 1987 (well, at least it was the first time I was at a convention; a
couple of weeks later I became a member of the SF Lovers Society of Poland). It
was a Thursday morning and the annual Polcon (this time in Warsaw, my home city)
was about to begin. I registered, got the information sheets, checked the
programme, and went to the movie room. I watched 2½ movies and then
nothing; there was a gap in the programme, with nothing to do. How glad I was when
I became friends with an equally lonely and somewhat confused girl. Later, we
watched more movies together and she shared her sandwiches with me. She definitely
saved me from starving to death, not that I would have noticed it, hypnotised by
the small tv screen. I think that there was nothing to eat at this students club
where everything took place. With something around a 1,000 attendants it was
probably the biggest con in Poland and probably the first one where not only club
members were allowed, also simple people from the street who saw the advertisement.
Well, not everybody did buy a subscription for food along with the attending
membership. At that time nobody would ever think of capitalism in Poland, and of
food that actually was easily digestible and wouldn't get one sick.That first day all I had to eat was
one small sandwich. But I didn't notice; I saw five or six movies and I don't
remember how I came home. The next days were similar -- home made sandwiches and
movies. That was my first convention. Later on I joined two clubs -- one was
fortunately situated in a students cafe so we could drink coca-cola (or Siberian
tonic -- with vodka) and eat cheese toast with mushrooms and ketchup. Just imagine
a semi-long parisian bun cut longways covered sparsely with cheese with here and
there small dark spots -- the mushrooms. At that time on every corner in Warsaw
they sold such toasts directly from tiny caravans, two square meters small; private
enterprise, the first signs of capitalism. Fast food a la Poland.The next year I and my friend Agata
(whom I met at the Warsaw Polcon) went south to Chorzow for the fourth Polcon. We
took a room at a youth hostel for the three nights and didn't bother about
organized meals; we went to town for shopping and made our own sandwiches. Mmmm,
I still remember those with the luncheon meat, you used the fat from the can as
butter. And this time we also had a bottle, one of the plastic type that you buy
good Scotch whisky in at airports. We poured cold tea in it, and added lots of
lemon juice and sugar. We caught many longing views from the other participants,
who questioned: 'Is it real?'Then in May 1991, a very important
convention took place; the Eurocon in Cracow. This time everything went
wrong; nobody knew where and when something was going to happen. I think the
person responsible for the organization is still on the Black List of Fandom. The
only thing that was OK was the town itself with all its famous restaurants. I
didn't bother very much preparing anything to eat. One day I went for lunch with
James P. Hogan, James Walker, a Belgian and a Polish fan; the next day I joined a
group of united German fans for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. But still we
prepared most of our meals in the hotel rooms.Then in December 1991, I went with
another friend to the Nordcon, organized by the Gdansk SF Club. It was fun, too.
First of all I got drafted; to the OKP (a citizens parliamentary club of
Solidarity), SS, and KGB. This OKP was a preparing camp of the SS (Special Forces)
and the KGB (Cosmic Group of Safety). We arrived again early Thursday morning
(Polish cons always last four days, from Thursday till Sunday) at Gdansk central
station. In great conspiracy we had to go to a newspaper stand and whisper
something to get instructions how to get to the place where the Imperial Space
Shuttle was waiting for us to get us to the top secret Camp. It was fun, with lots
of instant soup and luncheon meat sandwiches. I guess I did lose some weight; I
definitely like conventions.Today everything is different; after
five years of capitalism the quality of food has very much improved. There are
numerous restaurants for the wealthier fans. The conventions are occupied by
younger fans playing role-playing-games, not knowing of the problems we, the older
ones, had to cope with. They can buy all the books we could only dream about -- we
had to read them in horrible translations, published on newsprint by so-called
pirates in a gigantic edition of one hundred (!) pieces (which was of course highly
illegal). We also had more time and will back then to meet and talk. One must
also not forget why we met -- to buy the newest books and watch the newest
video film, as not many of us possessed a video recorder.I will miss those times...- - - - - - - - - -
David Levine, Portland, Oregon Thanks for Mimosa 15. It's
keen. I especially liked the cover and bacover, which I found terrible witty.
Then I suddenly realized: The vegetable 'graveyard' on the bacover is actually
where plants start, while the 'nursery' (harvest scene) is where plants end.
Whoa!- - - - - - - - - -
We Also Heard From: Chaz Baden; Harry Bell; Pamela Boal; Ned Brooks; G.M. Carr; Russ Chauvenet; Vincent Clarke; Chester Cuthbert; Buck Coulson; John Dallman; Richard Dengrove; Allyson Dyar; Sharon Farber; George Flynn; Brad Foster; Meade Frierson III; Tim Gatewood; Kim Hainsworth; Irwin Hirsh; Binker Hughes; Steve Hughes; Tom Jackson; Irv Koch; Ken Lake; Dave Langford; Rodney Leighton; Fred Liddle; Eric Lindsay; Ethel Lindsay; Sam Long; Adrienne Losin; Kev McVeigh; Murray Moore; Richard Newsome; Marc Ortlieb; Karen Pender-Gunn; Derek Pickles; Dave Rowe; Robert Sabella; Tom Sadler; Ron Salomon; Skel; Steve Sneyd; Garth Spencer; Alan Stewart; Mark Strickert; Jürgen Thomann; R Laurraine Tutihasi; Roger Waddington; Michael Waite; Taral Wayne; Henry Welch; Tom Whitmore; and Walt Willis. Thanks to one and all!!   Title illustration by Joe Mayhew Chat cartoon by Teddy Harvia Other illustrations by William Rotsler, Bill Kunkel, Phil Tortorici, Brad Foster, Alexis Gilliland, Joe Mayhew, and Steve Stiles & William Rotsler |
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